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Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

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Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#341

Post by davidw »

dragonwriter wrote: post #337
davidw wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy has one of those proportional parliaments. It's not exactly a utopia.

No place is "exactly a utopia", but the issue was the media being blamed as the root cause of the partisan duopoly in the US, which is pretty clearly not the case. OTOH, systems with greater proportionality in representation also tend to have higher public opinion of how well the local government works, which is probably not coincidental; for a good general survey, see Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy .

> systems with greater proportionality in representation also tend to have higher public opinion of how well the local government works

Maybe they tend to, but when they drew that graph, Italy is definitely an outlier. People are not at all fond of how the government works, putting it mildly!

Very proportional systems have large problems of their own too, including all the "horse trading" that goes on to form a coalition. This can and does involve a party that got, say 10%, driving a very hard bargain with the party that got 45%, giving far more relative weight to the people who voted for the 10% party.

You're right that the media is not The Problem, no argument there.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#342

Post by dragonwriter »

davidw wrote: post #341
dragonwriter wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No place is "exactly a utopia", but the issue was the media being blamed as the root cause of the partisan duopoly in the US, which is pretty clearly not the case. OTOH, systems with greater proportionality in representation also tend to have higher public opinion of how well the local government works, which is probably not coincidental; for a good general survey, see Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy .

> systems with greater proportionality in representation also tend to have higher public opinion of how well the local government works Maybe they tend to, but when they drew that graph, Italy is definitely an outlier. People are not at all fond of how the government works, putting it mildly! Very proportional systems have large problems of their own too, including all the "horse trading" that goes on to form a coali…

> Maybe they tend to, but when they drew that graph, Italy is definitely an outlier.

Granting that, why bring Italy up them?

> Very proportional systems have large problems of their own too, including all the "horse trading" that goes on to form a coalition.

Horse trading goes on to form a winning coalition in two-party systems, too (the major parties in electoral systems that create a two-competitive-party dynamic are, invariably, coalition parties); the difference is that, in such systems, the disporportionate power of the needed-to-win segment is less than in two-party systems, because its much easier -- because the factions are formal parties that you can negotiate with -- to swap coalition partners and form a new majority coalition if a minor partner wants too much.

(That's also, really -- outside of systems like the US where you've got an FPTP electoral system forcing pre-election coalition building -- a bigger issue in unitary parliamentary systems vs. separation of powers systems -- because having a majority coalition in parliament is a more significant issue in unitary systems whereas in separation of powers systems, ad hoc coalitions on particular issues can function in the legislature without requiring a stable "ruling" coalition in the legislature. So, if you are looking at an FPTP separation of powers system like the US, its a problem that moving to a proportionally-elected but still separation of powers system alleviates rather than making worse.)

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#345

Post by anoncowherd »

rayiner wrote: post #209
sinak wrote: post #89

I think it's pretty clear that we need both technical and legislative fixes to NSA surveillance. Just one of the two isn't enough: to get be even vaguely confident that surveillance ends, we need both. The technical fixes I can't speak to, but the legislative ones I've been thinking about for a while. In the last week, there have been two prominent bills announced to deal with surveillance: - Bill 1: The FISA Improve…

Legislative fixes aren't going to buy you a lot, though they'll buy you something. The fundamental problem is structural: there are a lot of things the NSA is totally allowed to do, especially when it acts as an agency of the executive outside of the U.S. Technologists tend to ignore national and jurisdictional borders because networks cross those borders, but the powers of the NSA are defined in terms of those borde…

Constitution, huh?

You may have noticed it getting thrown out the window already, what with American citizens in danger of being declared "enemy combatants" and locked away indefinitely without trial, or just droned to death on the spot and all.

Then there's Mr. Snowden, enjoying his Constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech.. in Moscow.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#346

Post by res0nat0r »

rsync wrote: post #290
ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I wondered about that traffic, and getting confirmation from the source that the only way the NSA could have it would be by tapping into the internal network is as quite damning. Google has the best OpSec team I've ever known, it is my hope that they close this 'loophole' as completely as possible.

Google, and their "geniuses" in opsec, should not be given a pass at all for this. Even if this is a leased private line, non-Internet routed, whatever, it is trivially easy to encrypt the communications and is absolutely a best practice. I see this as great big egg on their face. In fact, it's such a cock-up that one wonders if this is the plausibly deniable ingress that they agreed to provide for the NSA, et. al Th…

Tapping multi-mode dark fiber unnoticed is now considered trivially easy? I must have missed when the bar was shifted this high.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#347

Post by res0nat0r »

lsh123 wrote: post #226
mwytock wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? If the NSA wanted to own WePay they would have even with your "security best practices". Sorry bud.

Sure. A court order would do it no problem.

Also: Having someone in your outsourced datacenter splice cables, SPAN ports, install trojaned hardware, etc etc etc...

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#348

Post by res0nat0r »

pytrin wrote: post #124
wmf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In The Shadow Factory (written after the Klein leaks but before Snowden), Bamford notes that a lot of surveillance equipment comes from Israel. I don't know much about Israeli culture but it may be significantly different from the US.

Some equipment might come from Israel (it's just guessing though), but I do not like your implicit hinting that Israeli developers are somehow less moral than U.S developers (because of "cultural" differences?) - especially since you don't know much about it. You seem to be forgetting which government and agency is at the center of this debacle, don't try to share the blame on other nations or cultures for developing…

He isn't saying Israel is less moral at all. The book mentioned above specifically points out there are a good handful of companies that sell hardware/tech to the US government that have originated in Israel.

I think the point being that Israel happens to excel at this type of thing due to the simple fact that they have been surrounded by countries who have wanted to wipe them off the map for a long time. This has happened to breed the talent that is very useful to the NSA / surveillance industry.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#350

Post by angusangus »

pnathan wrote: post #332
Joeri wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wrong to portray this as a trade-off between more risk or less risk. In reality it's a trade-off between two kinds of risk. Without the NSA snooping there is a higher risk of terrorist attacks, but with the NSA snooping there is more risk of attacks on democracy. Imagine j. edgar hoover or richard nixon able to use all that NSA data for illegitimate purposes. How easy would it have been to supress dissenting pol…

That's a fair point. There are an array of risks that less (or more) intelligence shifts the balance around on. N.b., I don't really like to frame it as "attacks on democracy". That is (1) hyperbolic and (2) not obviously true. Words must be chosen very carefully in this debate (and it is a debate!) in order to not mislead or scare people away. I would argue that TLA snooping leads to the "Chilling effects" idea, whe…

I'm interested in this distinction.

It seems to me fairly self-evident that actions which chill debate or discussion limit political expression and an informed electorate, thereby fundamentally impinging on democracy. Why then distinguish between 'chilling effects' and an attack on democracy?

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